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 Saturday, May 8, 2004
Dissent. Top military officials speak out. [Eschaton]
Perhaps this is why they do not want soldiers in Iraq ti be abe to write emails back to the US? When soldiers at the higher levels express a sentiment like this, we may not be too far from Vietnam; 'I lost my brother in Vietnam,' added Hughes [Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad], a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. 'I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in'"QB 10:44:12 PM 
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Officials Rushed the Arrest of Portland Lawyer. Officials already seem to be backtracking on their arrest of Brandon Mayfield, the Portland, Oregon immigration and family law attorney (and former lieutenant in the U.S. army) arrested on a material witness warrant in connection with the March, 2004 Spain... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
A nice discussion of someone in the process of being 'disappeared' based on a single fingerprint that the FBI is not even certain is his on a bag that was found in Spain, when he has not left the US for 10 years. And this is an American citizen. Abuse of the material witness laws are another instance of the degradation of the rule of law. What a great country we live in. Just do not get noticed by the feds. They can hide you away, in violation of the Bill of Rights, simply by saying they need to. ANd, I guess after torture, they never have to admit they were wrong. 10:19:07 PM
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Losing Liberty. Anthony Lewis has a terrific column in the new Mother Jones, One Liberty At a Time, in which he argues: From the cages at Gunatanamo to a jail cell in Brooklyn, the administration isn't just threatening the rights of a... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
A much better writer than I discusses the degradation of the rule of law by this Administration. And, this degradation extends beyond this one area into virtually every area this administration works. From the FDA to the EPA. It makes its own rules, based on its own needs, twisting the law for its own political purposes. 10:14:48 PM
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The Power of Pictures. By many accounts, the horrible treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers and mercenaries has been going on ever since the end of the invasion. The Red Cross warned U.S. officials a year ago.
Yet it took those ugly photographs to turn this into the huge story that it's become. Which raises some questions:
Suppose the Americans hadn't bothered to take pictures of each other in that infamous prison? Suppose they'd just gone on abusing the prisoners without cameras? Does a story exist without pictures? [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
This is what scares me. The original comments of many in the administration hinted that they were upset the photos got shown, not that the torture took place. They have been hearing about this for over a year but only started working on it when pictures were found. then they knew they had to do something. But, what if there had been no pictures? They would had slimed ANYONE who suggested that this torture took place. Instead of discussing the courage of the whistleblower, they would have cashiered him and quietly moved the guilty out. It is only the ubiquity of the digital camera, and the obvious lack of guilt by the perpetrators, that permitted the scandal to be seen. I would be willing to bet that cameras will now be forbidden in such prisons, not because the prisons are necessarliy better, but just to prevent further scandal. Makes one wonder about Gitmo? 10:05:31 PM
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Scorning the Law. Anthony Lewis: A President Beyond the Law. The question tears at all of us, regardless of party or ideology: How could American men and women treat Iraqi prisoners with such cruelty — and laugh at their humiliation? We are told that there was a failure of military leadership. Officers in the field were lax. Pentagon officials didn't care. So the worst in human nature was allowed to flourish.
But something much more profound underlies this terrible episode. It is a culture of low regard for the law, of respecting the law only when it is convenient.
Again and again, over these last years, President Bush has made clear his view that law must bend to what he regards as necessity. National security as he defines it trumps our commitments to international law. The Constitution must yield to novel infringements on American freedom. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
This administration does not really believe in the rule of law because it is so darned inconvenient. So it will just ignore it when it finds it convenient to do so (i.e. Iran-contra is a good example.). And we are letting them. When we no longer revere the rule of law, when we substitute the beliefs of our leaders, then we will have lost and the terrorists will have won. 9:59:45 PM
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Guardian. The statement below is more than true. I spent some time checking this out and most positions, from analyst to senior analyst positions, require only a high school diploma and an active security clearance. The security clearance is the only gating factor. If a bachelors is required, the experience required is minimal. This is absolutely unnacceptable and very, very disturbing. If we lose the war on terrorism, and there are strong indicators that we will, the low quality of the people we have fighting it is going to be a major factor. What is even more disturbing is that there are dozens of companies that are making buckets of money on this farce.
Torin Nelson, who served as a military intelligence officer at Guantánamo Bay before moving to Abu Ghraib as a private contractor last year, blamed the abuses on a failure of command in US military intelligence and an over-reliance on private firms.
He alleged those companies were so anxious to meet the demand for their services, they sent "cooks and truck drivers" to work as interrogators.
"Military intelligence operations need to drastically change in order for something like this not to happen again," Mr Nelson told the Guardian. [John Robb's Weblog]
The question I'd be interested in hearing is what part of the admininstration is getting the kickbacls from these companies. Getting paid for highly trained interrogators but sending cooks and ruck drivers means a lot of maoney os being scammed by someone. 9:52:35 PM
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Rush, Rush. David Brock is staying on Limbaugh, Howard Kurtz's model mainstream conservative. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. LIMBAUGH: All right, so... [The Poor Man]
Talk about shrill. Being upset by the degradation of humans, by the rape of young boys, by the murder of prisoners under our care, is a sign of the feminization of America? The dissonance is so great that this bellowing buffoon is becoming really scary. For something as horrible as our treatment of these prisoners, something that brings up images of regimes like Saddam's or South Africa's, to be trivialized by this man is sickening. We aren't as bad but we have just started on this downward road. Where will we be in 5 more years of this war, the war that is gradually making us Un-American? 9:43:20 PM
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The Battle of Abu Ghraib. A few thoughts, not all of them polite. There are two sides to this problem: the human side and the... [The Poor Man]
NIce article explaining why someone from this fecjless administration must fall on theor sword for this, in order to display some sense of decency for this. But, since there appears to be a lack of such things in this administration, taking responsibility means finding someone else (presumably weaker) to take the fall. When will this administration have its McCarthy Army hearings moment? We are in big trouble if it does not happen soon. 9:30:06 PM
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They Get It. RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - Denouncing increased official secrecy, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley unveiled a plan Friday for... [The Poor Man]
Someone in the press is showing some backbone. Now all they have to do is practice their craft, instead of asking the government for permission. 9:26:08 PM
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Read the article I mentioned below. It is so ironic, to hear our government tell us we treat prisoners humanely, in the same article where they imply they withheld painkillers from a wounded prisoner. The ends DO NOT justify the means. Might DOES NOT make right. Everyone who believes these is part of the decline of America. When the history of this time is written, (and I am becoming surer and surer that, since history is written by the winners, it will not be us) the dogmatic practice of these two principles will serve as an example of what not to do. I just pray that we get through this period quickly. 9:18:48 PM
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If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job US Official with regard to torturing prisoners, December 2002
What a fine day to be an American. We are a long way down the slippery slope to totalitarian fascism if this is the attitude of those in government. This quote came from an article written back in December 2002 about the American approach towards interrogation. Maybe it works great against real terrorists but it appears more and more likely that the vast majority of people when have detained are just innocent bystanders, standing in the wrong place. The question is how many innocent people, including possibly American citizens, are we willing to torture to find 1 terrorist? If you torture an innocent long enough or hard enough, you can even get them to admit that they are a terrorist thus justifying your torture. How many have admitted to something just to get the torture to stop? Seems more and more like the way the Spanish Inquisition worked. I guess we can call this the American Inquisistion. All they have to do is prove that they are not terrorists by withstanding the torture we apply. Of course, if they do not talk, we just apply more torture. No proof, more torture. guess what? Eventually they all turn out to be terrorists.
Is this where we are headed? The requirement for terrorists is so great that abuse to create them is strong. Of course, the fall out from all of this is actually going to create more terrorists in the world, as this news gets out. Just more people to torture I guess. 9:02:12 PM
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Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Donald Rumsfeld Edition).
Michael Froomkin asks why he doesn't see things like this in his daily newspaper:
Whiskey Bar: Donald Rumsfeld's Battle With The Truth: Donald Rumsfeld's Battle With The Truth
"Beyond abuse of prisoners, there are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence toward prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
"I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture … I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word." Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
May 4, 2004
________________
"Let me be clear: I failed to recognize how important it was to elevate a matter of such gravity to the highest levels, including the president and the members of Congress." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
According to eye witnesses to debate at the highest levels of the Administration. ... whenever Powell or Armitage sought to question prisoner treatment issues, they were forced to endure what our source characterizes as "around the table, coarse, vulgar, frat-boy bully remarks about what these tough guys would do if they ever got their hands on prisoners." The Nelson Report
As quoted by Talking Points Memo.com
May 6, 2004
________________
"It's not correct to say "Nothing was done." You're making a set of conclusions that are just simply not accurate." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
From U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to investigators for the International Committee of the Red Cross, a broad array of officials pressed the Pentagon to improve conditions or face a likely Iraqi backlash, officials from the government and the organizations said yesterday." The Washington Post
Pentagon Was Warned of Abuse Months Ago
May 8, 2004
________________
"I can't conceive of anyone looking at the pictures and suggesting that anyone could have recommended, condoned, permitted, encouraged, subtly, directly, in any way, that those things take place." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
Detainees under supervision of military intelligence were at high risk of being subjected to a variety of harsh treatments ranging from insults, threats and humiliations to both physical and psychological coercion, which in some cases was tantamount to torture... International Committee of the Red Cross
Report on the Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
February, 2004
________________
"I have the [ICRC] report somewhere here and I'd be happy to let you see it. I'm reluctant to start discussing it, but I can say what I said. They found a number of things that they were concerned about, as they always do. And it's helpful, I must say." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
The report said the ICRC’s inspections “suggested the use of ill-treatment against persons deprived of their liberty went beyond exceptional cases and might be considered a practice tolerated by” coalition forces. Wall Street Journal
Bush Faces Some Stark Choices in Iraq
May 7, 2004
________________
"And when General Taguba came in and made his report, he indicated that a number of the issues that had been raised last year by the ICRC had, in fact, been corrected by the command structure between the time that they were observed by the ICRC and the time that General Taguba's team arrived on the scene." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” … that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law." Gen. Antonio Taguba
Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade
May 7, 2004
(note: this is the only mention of the ICRC in the Taguba report.)
________________
"We did not release the Taguba report to the press. That was done by someone to release against the law a secret document." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
Q: "Mr. Secretary, can you say why it was classified secret?" Do you know?RUMSFELD:"No, you'd have to ask the classifier." Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
May 4, 2004
In no case shall information be classified in order to: (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency. George W. Bush
Executive Order 13292
March 25, 2003
________________
We do not want America -- they do not want Americans or coalition forces in their country over a prolonged period, and goodness knows we don't want to be there." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
The United States is planning to establish up to four long-term military bases in Iraq. The proposal would transform America's ability to project its power in the Middle East. The Daily Telegraph
America plans military bases in Iraq to apply pressure on Middle East
April 21, 2003
________________
"We value human life. We believe in individual freedom and in the rule of law. For those beliefs, we send men and women of the armed forces abroad to protect that right for our own people and to give others who aren't Americans the hope of a future of freedom." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
The latest allegation involved an elderly Iraqi woman said to have been abused by U.S. military guards. The woman, arrested last July, was reportedly put into a harness and forced to crawl on her hands and knees while a guard rode her donkey-style. The Boston Herald
Guards treated woman like donkey
May 6, 2004
________________
"Above all, ask them if the willingness of Americans to acknowledge their own failures before humanity doesn't light the world as surely as the great ideas and beliefs that made this nation a beacon of hope and liberty for all who strive to be free." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?" Rush Limbaugh
It's Not About Us; This Is War!
May 4, 2004
________________
"This is also an occasion to demonstrate to the world the difference between those who believe in democracy and in human rights, and those who believe in rule by terrorist code." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
"My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen." Senior British Officer
Quoted in the Daily Telegraph
April 11, 2004
________________
"These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility." Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
May 7, 2004
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]
The inability of Donald Rumsfeld to even blush as he parses words to give exactly opposite conclusion from what are the facts is truly frightening. He appears to make up his responses in the moment with absolutely no connection to what he said earlier. But he is very careful in what he says and every word must be parsed to realize that he is obfiscating the truth. AND no one in Congress or the press calls him on it. Clinton lied about getting head and he is impeached. Rumsfeld lies about these scandals and he expects to keep his job. And as long as Bush thinks it is okay, he will. 8:46:29 PM
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All of this is important. These techniques were not something made up out of whole cloth. They were bastard versions of what the 'grown-up' interrogators do. Without the proper command structure, the checks and balances that allow these to even be contemplated, this is the result. It is like watching babies driving cars and then wondering why they do so much damage. Saying the babies are just rogues does not answer why anyone allowed them to get behind the steering wheel to begin with.
We have no proof that similar things are not being done in Gitmo. People who have returned from there have described similar things but our own government will not allow us to see. If someone if going to destroy the reputation of my country, I sure would like to be able to know whether it is being done. How in the world can any rational person not feel that the only recourse is to can someone at the top? Without that, and if Bush gets re-elected, the rest of the world WILL believe that ALL of us condone the behavior of this administration.
Words Fail. Ogged of Unfogged writes:
Unfogged: Oh my Lord.
U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.
This will define America for generations. (Note, please, that they "have sex" with the woman, but "rape" the boy.)
Do you really think it's alarmist to point out that Americans can be put away indefinitely on nothing more than one man's whim; that we have a collection of legal black holes: at Guantanamo, on ships around the world, in Iraq; that our soldiers blithely torture detainees; and that fully half the country still thinks the President is doing a good job? Do you wonder how totalitarian regimes come about? This is how: with the consent of the governed.
Look, I, and my friends and family, all live in urban areas, assuming our share of the risk of terrorist attacks. If this is being protected, I'll take my chances. I don't want to live like this, and I don't want these things done in my name. What happened to death before dishonor? Or is it already too late for that?
I don't think I can bear to write about this anymore. But, somehow, Teresa Nielsen Hayden still can:
Making Light: User base persistence: Josh Marshall writes:
This article in tomorrow’s Guardian suggests that some of these sexual humiliation methods apparently practiced at Abu Ghraib are taught to various special forces and military intelligence troops in the US and the UK, both to use them and also to prepare themselves to withstand them. What the Guardian suggests is in fact correct.
No, I’m not going to explain how I know that.
Back to Josh Marshall:
What’s now happening in Iraq is that the same methods are being passed down to untrained and unsupervised reservists; and the whole situation spirals out of control.I’m not sure this is the whole story. But it has a ring of truth to me, mixing, as it does, ugliness with disorganization and a spiralling cycle of unaccountability.
[He quotes from the Guardian] The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation - match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: “It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn’t know what they were doing.”
He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands …
Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons …
“The crucial difference from Iraq is that frontline soldiers who are made to experience R2I techniques themselves develop empathy. They realise the suffering they are causing. But people who haven’t undergone this don’t realise what they are doing to people. It’s a shambles in Iraq”.
As I said when I first wrote about this, those photos from Abu Ghair didn’t look to me like the kind of thing a bunch of novices would come up with on their own.
We delude ourselves when we give permission to commit evil acts to what we tell ourselves is a limited group of specialists.
There’s going to be some unavoidable human evil in any large undertaking. We can prepare for it, and do what we can about it when it happens, but nothing we do can wholly eliminate it. Still, in its state of nature it’s going to be limited... only a fraction of the population will think up and carry out evil actions on their own steam... what they initially come up with probably won’t work very well....
This level of everyday enforcement is hugely important... only a small percentage of people will do evil on their own, a much larger middle group will do so if they see others committing evil acts unchecked... the difference between four or five drunk, irresponsible louts jumping some defenseless person... and the complex learned social behaviors of American lynch mobs during the first half of the twentieth century....
We delude ourselves when we think we can keep a little pet evil set aside, telling ourselves it’ll only be used on Bad Guys. Whomever that turns out to be. Not that we’ve been thinking about that question real hard.
…
And now, a list: The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.
1. By counsel.
2. By command.
3. By consent.
4. By provocation.
5. By praise or flattery.
6. By concealment.
7. By partaking.
8. By silence.
9. By defense of the ill done. Anybody feel like keeping score?
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)] 8:37:51 PM
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